“We have to stop the Russians”

• 

  Kysia Hekster

  Correspondent of the European Union

“I told you to get up, faster!” Ten young men obey the command of their commander, who fires bullets right next to their heads. They better get used to it when they are sent to the front in Donbass, in eastern Ukraine. It is estimated that several hundred Chechens are fighting on the Ukrainian side against the Russians, in whom they have a common enemy.

We are at a media training of Chechen recruits in the snowy hills just outside the Ukrainian capital Kiev. One of the men who has been fighting the Russians in Ukraine since 2014 is Maga, the fighting name of 29-year-old Mohammed. “We know the pain of the Ukrainians. The Russians want to destroy them, just like they want to destroy my people. This brings us together, and that’s why we have to stop the Russians.”

Maga carries an impressive arsenal of weapons in her army uniform. There is no shortage of modern Western weapons and ammunition, she assures. She and she is only too happy to use them in battle. “Wherever the Russians come you see devastation, death, bloodshed. That won’t change. Wherever Russia goes, you see the same thing everywhere.”

It refers to the two Chechen wars for independence from Russia. The first war against the Chechen rebels lasted from 1994 to 1996, the second from 1999 to 2000. The Russians bombed the Chechens until there was nothing left, a tactic the Ukrainians are all too familiar with in this war.

In 2007, Vladimir Putin installed Ramzan Kadyrov as leader of Chechnya. He rules the Islamic republic with an iron fist. Human rights groups say he is directly responsible for the killings, torture and disappearances. Since Kadyrov took over, he has been “quiet”.

Kadyrov also has Chechens fighting in Ukraine, but on the Russian side. He says with some regularity that the Russians aren’t taking the Ukrainians hard enough. His “kadyrovtsy” are known for the horrors they inflict. They are associated with the killings of civilians in places such as Borodjanka and Butsha north of Kiev, which the Russians occupied there at the beginning of the war. Now they fight, among other things in Bachmut in Donbassdescribed by President Zelensky as “hell on earth”.

“Yes, we are facing each other,” says Maga. “But to me these are not Chechens. They are traitors fighting for Russia. They must be stopped at any cost.” Maga herself was still too young to fight in the previous two Chechen wars. But the deputy commander of her battalion, Muslim Madieev, is now fighting his third war against the Russians.

“But we were all alone then,” says 60-year-old Madieev. “We even asked for help, but no one lifted a finger. Thank God, the whole world is helping Ukraine now. We didn’t even have artillery. Now here is Himar, long-range missile systems. I tell you, if we if we had them then, if we hadn’t had to fight here now, we would have already stopped the Russian monster in our mountains.”

He still dreams of an independent Chechnya from Russia: Ichkeria, as the men here call their country. “When I see all these new recruits wanting to fight, I obviously hope they’ll be successful. We’re willing to make big sacrifices for that.” Maga also wants to contribute to her parents’ dream. “We are doing everything we can to make this war Russia’s last.”